


all these wasted games

by lazarov



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Boredom, Fate, Gen, Touring, cabin fever, self awareness, sex drugs and rock n' roll, the boy band crash-and-burn, you are not sidney prescott
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarov/pseuds/lazarov
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, late at night, they had one of those deep, half-asleep talks about whether or not having this kind of self-awareness now might stave off the the rehab, the controversies and the early graves later.  Liam, in his infinite wisdom, pointed out to them just how well that had worked out for kids in the Scream movies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all these wasted games

There's a game they play sometimes, when they're on the road for weeks on end.  Something about being stuck in a forty-foot-long cage for hours and hours of every day stretching into night and back into day again turns you into a kind of zombie, a sleepwalker.  They figure it's something to do with the combination of the bouncing tyres and the constant hiss of the air conditioner and the never-ending clicking and whirring and feedback coming from countless TVs and laptops and mobile phones.  And the _boredom_.  It makes you drive yourself crazy with your own thoughts.

The game starts the same way every time: with a question.

"First one to crash their car?" Zayn asks, apropos of nothing, not looking up from his Blackberry.  His thumbs are working quickly, speeding over the tiny buttons, _clickclickclickclick_.  The constant clicking is, on most days, enough to drive the rest of them insane, but once they're on the coach, once they've got their thousand-yard-stare back in place, they hardly even notice it.  It just fades away, white noise.  

Niall is the first one to respond, usually is.  He's the most restless, the one least apt to give himself over to Tour Fever. 

"Wait, like, proper crash?  Because I think we've all - 'cept Haz - had at least one -" Harry catches his name over the song playing in his earbuds and he pops one out, listening.

"Proper crash," Zayn amends.

"Dead?" Niall asks, and just from his profile, he can see Zayn roll his eyes, still tapping away at his phone.

"Not dead.  Just _crashed._ Otherwise I could've just asked _First one dead?_ couldn't I?  Just, you know, fleeing from paparazzi or drunk driving or something _dramatic_ like that.  Not a bump in a parking lot."

"Louis," says Harry, hopping from his bunk.  He's got top bunk this time (he hates the top bunk), above Niall's.  Zayn looks up from his phone.

"Final answer?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, definitely," Harry nods.  The key to playing the game well is to never apologize for your answers and to never withhold an answer just because it may be unflattering (or even unkind).  But, by the same token, you must always be able to back it up.  Put your money where your mouth is.

" _Me?_ " Louis asks, poking his head out past his curtain, scandalized.  He draws the word out for conviction.

" _You_ ," Harry says, but doesn't laugh.  Liam does, though, from the back of the bus, feet propped up on the leather sofa.  He's texting Danielle, Harry figures, guessing from the smile that passes over his face when his phone buzzes again (they have a strict no-ringer rule on the bus, for the sake of their collective sanity).  Harry ambles over and collapses at the other end, allowing Liam rest his feet on his lap.  He casually rubs at Liam's socked left foot as he continues, "'Course it'll be you.  You're a terrible driver, you never put your phone down."

Louis scoffs and leans out of his bunk to join in, "Yeah, but - okay.  We're talking a good crash.  It's gonna be Zayn, chased by paparazzi or girls or something.  He has the least patience for that stuff, _and you know it_ ," he adds pointedly, catching Zayn's eye and ignoring his stuck-out tongue.  "He'll come out of a club and be in a piss poor mood and one of 'em will shout something at him while he's getting in his car, something that makes him angry-" 

"YER MUM'S A SLAG!" Harry yells in a Geordie accent that makes Liam slap his hands over his ears and give him a kick.  Louis rolls his eyes.

Zayn looks disgusted and Niall snorts a laugh, adding, "Yeah, right, and then he'll peel out of there and run someone over, _Lindsay-Lohan-style._ "  He says it like he's telling a spooky story, his voice dropping to something low and menacing.  As menacing as he can manage, anyway, before he starts laughing at his own joke.

"Alright, fine, first one in rehab, _Demi-Lovato-style_ ," Zayn says, mostly in retaliation towards Niall, whose grin disappears immediately. 

"Fuck off."

"Fair question though," Harry says.  They all know the rules.  

The game seems like gallows humour, and it is, but the boys know the truth.  Youth plus insane amounts of fame plus loads of money plus all the girls you could ever want -- you're special if you manage to _not_ become completely fucked up.  The most pessimistic out of them see it as an odds game.  They think it's fated, it's unavoidable, and all you can do is just hope you're the one who ends up narrating the _Where Are They Now?_ special twenty years later and not one of the ones in the sappy montage.  Not one of the ones that friends and family are talking about in past-tense while dabbing at their eyes with a tissue.  

"Is there rehab for sex addiction?" Liam asks, innocently.  Harry pokes him in the ribs, a little harder than he deserves, and Liam grins back at him, caught.

"Yeah, yeah, 'course there is.  Russell Brand, right?" Louis says.  "He was in for sex addiction.  And crack."  He looks at Harry.  "Don't do crack."

Harry crosses his heart, "Just black-tar heroin."

"Good lad."

"That's a shit thing for you to say, she's been nothing but nice to you," Niall frowns at Zayn.

"Yeah but it's _true,"_ Liam says, sliding his phone into his jeans pocket.  "I mean, she's like, the _stereotype_.  Disney and then rehab and all that."

"But she's _better_ _now_." Niall's riled up, his voice cracking a bit, and Zayn reaches across the space between their bunks to put an apologetic hand on Niall's shoulder but he pushes him away.  "She's touring and she's on TV and she's happy.  Don't pick on her."

"Yeah, but it's been how long now since she's been let out of treatment?  A few months?  And you know Simon, he likes to pick people just for their potential drama."  Liam can feel something go off inside his chest, something like a warning bell, but he can't stop himself.  "Christ, _Britney Spears,_ there's another one right there." 

The game starts out fun, every time, and quickly spirals into _this_ , every time.  Once they get started, they can't help themselves. _L'appel du vide._

" _Another one_?" Niall roars.  "Another _what_ , exactly?"  It's not just a question, it's a challenge, one he puts forth to the entire room.  Another what?  

And obviously they know the answer, they've mulled over, fought over, the answer so many times before while playing.  Another what?  Just another person described by their friends and family in the _Where Are They Now?_ interviews as "so nice, so smart, so down-to-earth."  _Before_.  

They know it doesn't matter how nice, smart, down-to-earth they all feel right now.  It's easy to feel in control when you're at the top of the world.  Once, late at night, they had one of those deep, half-asleep talks about whether or not having this kind of self-awareness _now_ might stave off the the rehab, the controversies and the early graves _later_.  Liam, in his infinite wisdom, pointed out to them just how well that had worked out for kids in the _Scream_ movies.  They didn't know what to say after that.

Nobody speaks up to answer Niall's challenge and they sit in silence for a while except for the _taptaptap_ of Zayn's phone.  Louis is hanging halfway out of his bunk, frozen, afraid to move and risk drawing any attention to himself.

"I'm sorry," Liam says finally.  "She's doing okay now, right?"

"Yeah," Niall says, apology accepted (he knows the rules too, as well as any of them).  "Yeah, I mean, I've never really - we haven't talked about it."  He seems embarrassed.

"Just don't let it freak you out," Louis says and he thinks about Eleanor's scars, the ones she manages to hide under her pretty little dresses.  The scars he'd never tell the rest of them about because he'd never risk letting her become part of the game (he admits that he's incredibly hypocritical, because he's guilty of occasionally bringing up Demi's past while playing.  He knows how much of a betrayal that is).  "And if you can't help it and it freaks you out, just don't let it show."

Harry and Liam and Zayn nod in agreement and Niall just feels confused.

"Honestly though, I'm so convinced it's gonna be me," Harry says.  The boys all look at him, and he immediately feels very small.  He shifts and Liam pulls his feet out of his lap, allowing Harry to bring his knees up to his chest, resting his chin on top.

None of them would admit to the close eye they keep on each other these days.  Counting each others' drinks when they go to the club, always volunteering to join when one of them leaves for the washroom to make sure he's actually taking a slash and not sneaking off to snort coke with that cute girl that passed him a note a few minutes before.  

At the moment they worry the most, collectively, about Harry, because he's the hardest for them to keep track of.  He's the one who spends the least amount of time at home when they're on a break from touring, always at some bird's house doing _god knows what_.  They figure that any time he's not directly observable or contactable is an opportunity for him to step into that trap they know is waiting for all of them.  When they haven't heard from him for a couple days, beyond the occasional lazy text response ( _haha_ or _good, you?_ or _just hanging out_ ), the four find themselves conferring, like the board of directors of some kind of ridiculous firm, about whether or not they should stage an intervention.  _Russell Brand,_ they say to each other knowingly, as if that's all that needs to be said.  The three of them aren't quite sure what kind of gateway drug older women are (particularly because, when they talk about it out loud, it feels like the _dumbest thing in the world to worry about, ever_ ), but they aren't above trying to avoid finding out.

"Because?" Louis asks, and it's all he can do not to meet the _board of directors_ glances from Liam and Niall and Zayn.

"Because, I don't know,  everyone - the press, fans, maybe you guys, whatever - thinks it's going to be me, so it probably will be.  I think it kind of just works that way."

"I don't think it does," Liam says, sneaking his feet back underneath Harry.  

Louis slides out of his bunk and sits on the opposite sofa, cross-legged. "Me neither."

"Still," Harry says, shrugging.  He isn't sure what else to say.  He thinks sometimes that maybe he believes the most, out of all of them, in the inevitability of the trademark Former-Boyband-Member Crash-and-Burn. They all look down, at their hands or their feet or their phones, uncomfortable.

"How about the one who's got the family and the middle-management job when he's thirty?" Niall asks, trying to cut through the mood that's taken over the coach.

"Liam," Louis and Zayn say almost immediately, in unison.  Liam, hard to offend, just grins and flexes his arm in victory.  But no one laughs, the game has already left a bitter taste in their mouths.

It ends in silence, as it usually does.   Sometimes they can make it ten, fifteen rounds, laughing and teasing each other through question after question, but most times, it ends with a fizzle, when they've worn themselves out or hit a nerve or come too close to approaching an uncomfortable truth.  

There are other rules, too: whatever's discussed within the context of the game doesn't get discussed until they're playing again, which sometimes takes days, weeks.  If a question weighs on one of their minds, it's up to them to start the game over again, only when all five are present.  It manages keeps them focused and aware and honest and on the somewhat-straight-and-narrow, like a messy group therapy session. 

Sometimes, though, (and he would never suggest it out loud to the other lads) Harry wonders whether or not, by talking about it, they're all just playing with fire, sealing their own fates.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in a flurry and is still a little messy. If anyone is willing to do some beta work on it, I would be so grateful.
> 
> Written while listening to [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph0CCrQPvJM). (Foals have been in heavy rotation lately.)


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